21 years ago on December 31 in a B&B room in St. Ives (a gentle but chilling rain misting the window) just up from the seafront where (as every year) the whole town in fancy dress swarmed through the streets dancing and drinking beer disregarding the chilling rain but which we in our improvised fancy dress found too chilling and so climbed the stairs to the upper floor of the B&B our room under the eaves and watched the telly waiting for midnight 2000. And maybe (who knows?) the Y2K bug would bite at midnight (computer years having only 2 digits) so at midnight clocks would stop airplanes fall out of the sky and it would be 1900 again. But midnight came and the fireworks blazed and it was 2000 which we called the millennium though it wasn't (that would be next year) but we didn't care we were in a hurry for the year for the century for the millennium to be over we'd had enough of the last 1000 years we were ready for something better. That was 21 years ago. There are many people (more all the time) for whom the previous 1000 years are history. And what is history if not something to forget? And maybe that's the answer. Maybe there are just too many of us who still remember those 1000 years and won't let them sink away into the sea of history who are still parading around in fancy dress pretending to be what we no longer are and 21 years into the new millenium still think it's 1900.
